Harry Potter Party

Way back at the beginning of the year, my oldest, Jingus, turned eleven.  He is a huge Harry Potter fan, so we had a Harry Potter party.

I mentioned that we were doing that a long time ago, but I never showed you the party.

(hanging my head in shame)

I hope that you’ll forgive me! 

This Harry Potter party was a lot of fun.  It was perfect for an eleven-year-old birthday party.  There were a few things I would have done differently, but whatevs.  It was Jingus’s party, so we did it his way. 

His party invitations were Hogwarts Acceptance Letters.

We ran through Platform 9 3/4 to get onto the Hogwarts Express.  This is just a cheap plastic tablecloth.  I would have sponge painted the bricks onto it, but Jingus wanted to do it this way.

First, the wands chose the wizards.  I posted a tutorial for the wands a few months ago.

Then the wizards were sorted into their Houses.  We just used a witch hat for The Sorting Hat.  I wrote down all the house names on strips of paper and put them into the bowl.  Each guest pulled a paper out of the bowl, and that was what house they were “sorted” into.

We played “How well do you know your Hogwarts Staff and Students.”  I found this printable somewhere on Pinterest.  Not gonna lie.  There was a lot of cheating happening with this game!  Everyone wanted to copy my boys' worksheets.  Dang.  My kids are geeks too!  They never really stood a chance…

Here’s “the trolley.”  Oh.  Didn’t get a picture of all the balloons in the front room.  We had to blow up a gagillion balloons.  Want to know how I did it?!

Monkey’s nebulizer!  Ha!  All those hospital visits last Winter weren’t good for nothing!  :)  Mkay.  Back to the trolley:

Look at all that deliciousness!  I made the chocolate frogs from this mold I bought off of Amazon:

CK Products Frog Assortment Chocolate Mold

The frogs are just melted chocolate chips.

We just named some of these treats after Harry Potter treats.  They’re Jingus’ favorite snacks.

We couldn’t forget the Butter Beer!  These are just IBC cream sodas with labels I found off Pinterest.  I don’t remember where, but I’ve got all of these things pinned on my Birthday Pinboard.

All those party boys cleared us out of EVERYTHING!!

Especially this one.  He loves to eat sweets!

After all of the games and presents, the boys headed downstairs to watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

It was a really fun party.  At one point, I was thinking, “My goodness!  All this time and money put into the party!  It would have been so much easier to just buy him more presents!” 

But, then, all his friends came over. 

They raised a ruckus. 

They got high off of sugar. 

They had so much fun. 

The presents they gave him were more special because, “That one is from…I love this one from...  I wish he didn’t move or that we could play more often…” 

And then I realized it was so worth it.  He had a fun day with his friends, and they all had fun at the party.  It made this Momma’s heart happy to see her boys having such a great time!  It was definitely worth all the effort, and he’ll always have the memory. 

That lasts a lot longer than a present!